The Young Victoria

Charles Dickens spent the majority of his writing life as the editor of a paper or a magazine, and when you are the editor, you get to publish your own work with a certain amount of impunity. “Oliver Twist” was serialized in “Bentley’s Miscellany,” a paper Dickens ran for just two years. All the Year Round, a magazine which had the added benefit of being subtitled “A Weekly Journal Edited by Charles Dickens,” ran the biggies “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Great Expectations.” As publishing goes, Dickens was running a pretty clever racket.